What Batting Practice Offers Business Bloggers

Spring is coming...I hear.

That means baseball teams and players are getting more serious now about bat speeds, bat control. And batting practice gets more serious.

Batting practice...all those easy pitches that produce fly-outs and in-field dribblers, singles and pop-ups, strikeouts and the occasional triple or home-run...is in full swing.

For the great players, batting practice takes place all year. Maybe less, maybe more. But the greats are constantly honing their skills, regularly, quietly, consistently.

The results begin to show up even from the first day. The skills and the skills needed. A pitch low and away and that’s going downtown, out of the park. A pitch high and inside and the batter is going down, hard. Opposite field, not so good. Pulling hits? Very good.

The crowds are small. The comments are comments, not cheers and jeers. The followers aren’t strangers.

Then the batter is in front of a crowd. The crowd’s grow. The comments now are cheers or jeers. More strangers. And some new, genuine fans and friends you would never meet otherwise.

Blogging works the same way. You have to take your turn in the blogging cage. Take your pitches, your ideas, and swing away with blog post or two.

That’s the daily blog post.

Some are hits. Some are fouls (some of mine may have been very foul...). Some are strikeouts. And every so often...you write a home-run piece. Some stints, some posts, reflect a blue-collar day. You took the pitch, published your post. And blue-collar days are the unpleasant steps to the days where you hit a post out of your blog-park, or a series of posts out of your won park.

Accolades come from near and far, followers and strangers, readers and those who found your post with a random search. Sure, a few spammers show up. They are blogging’s equivalent of the drunk and obnoxious fan yammerin’ crap that makes no sense, but gets people to look. Free speech and internet anonymity.

Now you’re on a roll. Now you’re invited to the big leagues as either a guest blogger or traffic to your site makes you a star.

But it all comes back to that daily blog post, your batting practice. Practicing, practicing, practicing. Writing, writing, writing. Every day.

* Photo: Renphoto from istockphoto